Overall, are you happy with Google ?

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Sgt_Kickaxe

7:54 am on Jan 25, 2012 (gmt 0)

Are you happy with Google as a company today, including all of its products and services? Are you more or less happy with them than you were 2 years ago under old leadership? Do you feel Google is listening to you, the user, in their master plan?

Overall I'd put my own satisfaction level with Google currently at 50%.

- Pro: They do offer some excellent services including free email and new url based maps (that don't require a Google javascript file be loaded)

- Con: They do not offer privacy (especially from Google) on any level and now force a Google+ social account on anyone wanting a new Google account.

BeeDeeDubbleU

HuskyPup

1:44 pm on Jan 25, 2012 (gmt 0)

My opinion of Google is at an all-time low, satisfaction maybe just achieving 10%.

I use as few of their services as possible, in fact I now only use AdSense, Google Search occasionally and I have a tablet PC running Android which I only use to catch-up on news etc, I never use it to log-on to anything.

Furthermore this last week we have backed-up EVERY Gmail account and have cleared EVERY Gmail account, both corporate and personal, of all information, some we have deleted altogether but some have been retained purely for name defense purposes.

I was about to place a bulk order for new Motorola Razr phones, that has now been put on hold whilst we reassess out options.

As a company we are not at all impressed with what G is doing and actions such as yesterday's pushes us even further away. The sooner people get off the GDrug the better IMHO.

If you do not care about your privacy then it really does not matter to you what I write!

Andem

5:34 am on Jan 26, 2012 (gmt 0)

My feels echo that of HuskyPup.

Google used to be a company that really wanted to "not be evil". Within the past 2 or so years, their heavy-handedness has become disturbing and while GOOG used to be a really cool company, it has become extremely creepy. The transformation from cool to creepy kind of started after the original Google IPO back in 2004 and the company has become more and more pervasive. The pervasiveness of Google has been growing exponentially for years and now is when people are really started to realize that the coolness factor no longer outweighs the creepy factor. High-profile bloggers and some mainstream media are finally reporting this to the masses who normally don't realize these types of things.

Their PR people are actually really good when it comes to being mouthpieces for the company; unfortunately for GOOG, they have not been given the resources beyond an official blog to spread their 'reasoning' for the changes happening at the Plex (and with your personal data). It's all fine and great to say that 70 privacy policies and terms of service documents will now be combined respectively, but with so many services with different functions, combining these documents into a simplified and readable catch-all gives the Plex too much power.

With that said, I try to limit my usage of various Google services. Analytics were disabled a long time ago and I continue to use Gmail and Search (combined with Bing Search). My mobile phone runs Android, but I do run a customized OS (or ROM) which gives me more control over what services I use and what information is shared. Users running Android should be very very careful of checking every setting of every Google function on the phone: You *are* being tracked and your travel patterns will be connected to the profile Google has of you.

Personally, I was worried when I found out that my brand new Android phone (I purchased a day before I went on holidays) tracked me for over 2000km. It knew virtually every location I had visited over a 2 week period, everywhere we tanked for gas, each place we ate dinner and every hotel we slept at. I was almost sure I had disabled 'latitude' from the beginning, but obvious not. IMHO, this is the type of service that should be opted-into manually or by request, not by default. CREEPY!

tangor

6:32 am on Jan 26, 2012 (gmt 0)

- Pro: They do offer some excellent services including free email and new url based maps (that don't require a Google javascript file be loaded)

Most webmasters have ability to have their own email (same cost as having the website, thus "free") and maps... well there's got to be a reason for having that. I've been g free for nearly three years on a personal basis, but my clients, on the other hand, keep me there even when I can show them a different path. So, I trundle on... but happy? Not so much these days. And, as indicated in link above, even less so. :)

Personal is personal. Biz is biz. So I keep in touch with the G...

Marshall

7:11 am on Jan 26, 2012 (gmt 0)

I cannot think of anything positive to say, so I will not say anything.

Marshall

The Shower Scene

8:30 am on Jan 26, 2012 (gmt 0)

I am less happy with Google and I don't trust Google.

Google search, non-work related searching, has become worse. Researching products is incredibly difficult. Even with advanced search operators Google still gives me the wrong results. It's like I'm fighting against Google all the time, with Google assuming I'm searching for things I clearly am not, even with seven words and the verbatim thing turned on. I don't know how normal people find anything on Google Search anymore.

Virtually everything Google offers is like an apple with a razor blade in it. From Android to Chrome on the consumer side to Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools on the Internet data collection side- they're all part of an insatiable mouth greedily devouring data. I sincerely do not trust Google. Not with my private website information. Not with my browsing habits. Not with my phone.

enigma1

11:36 am on Jan 26, 2012 (gmt 0)

Pro: They do offer some excellent services including free email

Right and some use it for business purposes. And you know what happens if google decides to take the account down.

As a side note I started seeing recently when I go to the google home page using a FF the recommendation to install chrome. That's not great.

BeeDeeDubbleU

2:13 pm on Jan 26, 2012 (gmt 0)

I think the problem with this is that people just do not understand how little it cost to have their own (ad free!) email address.